A powerful desire came over the bishop to do just that, to bring on the interlace, to unite into his monarch, Codrus. He could sense the faint presence of his tway, who had just received the identical news through his own dyap. Although his tway was thousands of kilometers away, an interlink could be accomplished irrespective of distance.
But he also knew his tway’s schedule and now was not a good time. The E-Tech Board of Regents was about to begin their afternoon meeting in Philadelphia. As his tway was a member of that esteemed group, any sudden alteration of consciousness – two tways linking into monarchy – might be noticed by one of the other regents. And then there was Doctor Emanuel, whose keenness of mind was greater than his advanced years might indicate.
Bishop Rikov sighed. True mourning would have to wait until he and his tway were simultaneously free of obligations. For now, he would have to settle for a dulling of the emotions.
He got on the intercom to one of his assistants, gave the woman explicit instructions that for the next hour he was not to be disturbed. Unlocking a private liquor cabinet, the bishop withdrew one of his finest bi-bottled wines. The double-necked glass container was partitioned to contain a ’69 Argentine malbec and a ’71 New Zealand sauvignon blanc. He preferred the red; his tway enjoyed the white. Ideally, they enjoyed their drinks together.
He uncorked the malbec neck, allowed the wine to breathe briefly before filling his glass. Sappho and Theophrastus had never shown any interest in the joys of a fine wine. Aristotle had been the only monarch to share Codrus’s passion.
Turning his chair symbolically toward the south, the direction of Cape Town, the bishop raised his glass. “A toast to the departed. To Aristotle of the Ash Ock.”
He took a long sip. The wine went down smoothly. A fruity aftertaste lingered, a mix of mulberry, raspberry and seventeen delicate spices, each readily identifiable. Aristotle and his tways, fellow oenophiles and malbec connoisseurs, would have given the wine a most favorable rating.
Twenty-Two
The Board of Regents had elected to emerge from secrecy and again gather in the spacious fifty-sixth floor conference room at E-Tech headquarters. It was felt that an E-Tech safe house would be of little deterrent to any future assassination attempts.
Bel was running a few minutes late. Considering how far she had to travel to get here – hop an elevator near her office and descend one floor – she had no excuse. Still, there was a reason for her tardiness. Just minutes ago, Intelligence Director Pablo Dominguez had made a startling revelation, one that she didn’t dare to share with the board. She was still dwelling on the impact of what he’d divulged when she reached the corridor outside the conference room.
Security Chief Bull Idwicki had stationed a trio of armed guards at the door. They made Bel go through a scanner, show ID and repeat a code phrase before allowing her to pass. She’d gritted her teeth, annoyed that the procedure tacked extra moments onto her tardiness.
Recently, she’d called Idwicki to her office to voice her doubts about the effectiveness of his beefed-up security, particularly the bodyguards who accompanied her everywhere outside the building. He’d taken offense.
“The men and women I’ve assigned to protect your life are seasoned veterans, each one of them an A-plus graduate of multiple training seminars,” he’d boasted. “Their abilities cannot be questioned.”
Everybody’s abilities can be questioned, she’d wanted to counter, equally annoyed that he hadn’t really responded to her criticism.
Idwicki was a compact man of large girth whose first name was eminently suitable. Nick said he was built like a brick shithouse and had a mind to match. It was a peculiar description but one that seemed fitting.
She’d learned to take Bull Idwicki’s bold pronouncements with a modicum of skepticism. But as annoying as she found him, she knew that attempting to have him replaced would result in expending a great deal of political capital. Over the years, the Security Chief had managed to ingratiate himself with many of the regents. They’d held him blameless in the attack on headquarters, preferring to take the commonly held view that an encounter with a Paratwa assassin was comparable to an unpredictable onslaught of bad weather – in the parlance of the insurance industry, an act of god. Bull Idwicki’s entire approach to his job seemed based on simply ignoring problems that were beyond the capabilities of his department to handle.
As Bel entered the conference room, she passed a young woman in the uniform of a private security service on her way out. That meant the meeting was starting late anyway.
The woman carried a multiphase scanner. Board president Suzanna Al-Harthi was obsessively concerned – some might say paranoid – about the possibility of electronic eavesdropping. Even though Bull Idwicki had his Security people sweep regularly for bugs, Al-Harthi insisted that their efforts be confirmed by her own independent contractor, and done so just moments before the start of every meeting.
As usual, all fifteen regents were present. Today, eight were here in person and seven were holocommuting. Doctor Emanuel occupied his usual corner seat. Bel took her place at the head of the table.
“I apologize for running a bit late,” she offered. “I have to remember to add a bit more time to allow our Security people to do their jobs.”
Al-Harthi gave a curt nod and opened the meeting by deferring to one of the virtual regents, Lois Perlman. A tall woman with fishnetted black hair, she was science adviser to the Mideast Coalition. She struck Bel as a woman who would appear graceful in any social setting.
Perlman began with a report on the latest E-Tech plan to secure the backing of some of the Mideast Coalition’s less advanced nations and city-states. Understandably, those governments wanted to catch up to their more sophisticated brethren before having to limit their own sci-tech development. Perlman was proposing substantial grant monies to lessen their objections and smooth the waters.
Bel listened only half-heartedly. Instead, she kept scanning those fifteen faces as the words of Pablo Dominguez echoed in her mind.
We have a mole among the regents.
The Intelligence head had passed along the startling news during a hastily called private meeting. Dominguez was physically imposing, two meters in height with a chiseled face and long black hair. His lineage went back to a Spanish colonist who’d mated with a Native American woman of the Lenni Lenape tribe in the eighteenth century.
“One of the regents is secretly feeding information to the Royal Caste,” he’d announced grimly. “We do not know his or her identity.”
It was well known that delicate matters discussed at board meetings often found their way into the media. Various individuals or factions among the regents were savvy at the old political game of leaking information to gain support for pet projects or other initiatives. But Bel found it hard to believe the board had been infiltrated by a servitor and said so.
“Our intel does not necessarily point toward a servitor,” Dominguez said. “Evidence supports the contention that the mole could actually be the tway of a Paratwa assassin.”
She’d sent Nick a message immediately to tell him the news. He revealed rare surprise but also voiced suspicion about the validity of Dominguez’s intel. Although the Intelligence head was proving to be a solid supporter of Bel’s initiatives, Nick had the impression that he was a bit resentful of her promotion.
“Could be dirty tricks on his part,” Nick proposed. “Feeding you false intel to poison your relationship with the regents.”
The idea wasn’t completely off the wall. Bel knew there was a certain amount of jealousy on the part of the associate directors. Many of them, as well as others throughout the organization, believed that Pablo Dominguez should have been promoted to Executive Director and were disappointed when the regents chose her. Still, she preferred to believe he wouldn’t go so far as to lie in order to sabotage her.
Nick had said he hoped to learn more about the mole this evening. Whether it was coincidental or related to Dominguez’s intel, Ektor Fa
ng had just contacted him for another clandestine meeting across the border. The Du Pal would be in communication again shortly to provide details for their rendezvous.
“I want to meet him,” Bel had messaged. “I’m coming with you.”
“Not a good idea. He will object. We only meet alone.”
“Not this time. Like it or not, tell him I’ll be there.”
“Director Bakana, any comments on Ms Perlman’s report?”
Al-Harthi’s question drew Bel’s attention back to the conference room.
“Nothing at this time,” she said, having reviewed the plan prior to the board meeting. “But I would like to have Operations do a more detailed analysis before we commit resources in the form of grants.”
“Agreed?” Al-Harthi asked, scanning the faces for dissenters and seeing none. “Moving on, I’d like to discuss the proposal for streamlining our colonial immigration program–”
“Important as that may be,” Vok Shen’s holo interrupted, “I would suggest that the attack on Cape Town receive our full and immediate attention. We should discuss a substantial aid package.”
Bel suspected the Asian industrialist’s concerns weren’t strictly humanitarian. One of Vok Shen’s corporations had a subsidiary based in Cape Town. A factory had been destroyed and an unknown number of his employees killed.
She automatically turned her attention to R Jobs Headly even before the younger man stood. Her experience with the board thus far had revealed a number of ongoing conflicts between members, none more intense than the constant and somewhat childish feuding between Shen and Headly. It had devolved to the point that if one man said yes, the other said no automatically, and vice versa.
“The Cape Town tragedy certainly deserves our attention,” Headly said, offering up his trademark faint smile, which Bel suspected was mainly intended to annoy Shen. “But I would suggest we stick to Ms Al-Harthi’s meeting agenda.”
“A death toll of more than a million souls is certainly more important than streamlining a bureaucracy,” Vok Shen snapped.
Al-Harthi, as ever thrust into the role of peacemaker between the two, held up her hand. “Gentlemen, please. Is this really worth an argument? Both issues will be addressed in due course.”
Bel’s wrist fob pulsed, indicating she had a message. She unrolled her pad, read the note. It was from Nick.
He says OK, you can come along. But you’re not going to like where we’re going or how we need to get there.
Twenty-Three
Nick was right. Bel didn’t like the location of tonight’s encounter with Ektor Fang. She’d almost changed her mind twice during the short interval between leaving Nick’s apartment on the back of his Chevy Destello and reaching their initial destination.
He was also correct in that she didn’t like how they needed to get there. The midnight incursion into Philly-unsec had to be done covertly and at an out of the way location far from the nearest transit station. With Nick’s help, she’d arranged to sneak away from her bodyguards. There’d be hell to pay when Bull Idwicki confronted her about it in the morning, but that was the least of her concerns.
If she and Nick were caught attempting to enter unsecured territory illegally, that alone would create a firestorm within E-Tech, horrifying her staff, coworkers and regents. Bad enough that such a crossing in either direction was considered a felony. Even worse would be the political blowback. She could see the headlines plastered across the newsphere.
E-Tech Director snared in attempt to sneak into unsecured regions.
Mystery rendezvous entices head of E-Tech to risk the terrors of the zoo.
Annabel Bakana: Arrogant? Above the law? Undiagnosed mental health issues?
But as Nick had explained, a legal crossing through a transit station wasn’t an option. E-Tech would surely be notified and there’d be too many questions she couldn’t answer. Even if they used fake permits and she employed a physical disguise, it was unlikely she’d fool the DNA scanners and other sensors.
Still, no matter the risk, she was determined to meet Nick’s source. Her reasons were complex and perhaps not altogether rational.
The idea of being up close and personal with a Paratwa, actually having a conversation with it, intrigued her. She’d spoken to them before but they’d always been from the entertainment field: standup comedy duets, selfboxers, antonymous acrobats, all swift and pleasantly diverting. Those binaries, once she’d gotten over the inherent oddness of their possessing dual bodies, seemed altogether human, capable of experiencing laughter and tears and every emotion in between. Yet they were said to be a far cry from the creature she would encounter tonight.
Twice in her life she’d had close calls with assassins. During the most recent one, the attack on headquarters, she’d hidden in a closet. But on the first occasion, that luxury hadn’t been available. She’d come within a few meters of the Paratwa.
The incident had occurred at the tender age of eleven while vacationing with her parents in Abu Dhabi. Strife between religious factions led to an assassin being hired to slaughter worshippers on their way to a mosque.
Although Bel and her parents had been on the periphery of the attack, she could still recall the horror of seeing soldiers decapitated by the slashing Cohe beams wielded by the tways. Moments later the creature had run past them in back-to-back formation. She remembered being terrified at those four churning legs, at those two heads rhythmically jerking back and forth as they scanned for threats.
What happened in Abu Dhabi had shaped a lifetime attitude toward the Paratwa. It had propelled her toward the belief that every last one of them needed to be destroyed.
She knew that such savage emotions, amplified by the attack on headquarters, were irrational. Lately, a growing feeling had come upon her that she needed to walk a brighter path. She found herself increasingly imagining that distant horizon, where peace and comradeship reigned in place of the endless hatred and violence between those born as one and those born as two.
That feeling had led her to speculate whether there might be another side to the assassins. Did they possess qualities above and beyond their ferocious reputations, qualities that offered an opportunity for reconciliation, for a chance at harmonious coexistence with humans? Could Ektor Fang, whom Nick described as intelligent and well-educated, reveal a means to reaching that brighter path?
Bel wasn’t overly optimistic. Still, she needed to explore the possibility, seek answers to those questions.
Nick made a sharp right turn off the main road onto a gravel shoulder. Her seat back adjusted to the sudden angling, keeping her upright. The Destello wove through a nest of pine trees, many dead or dying from exposure to the relentless smog.
A narrow bridge took them across winding Cobbs Creek, which roughly paralleled Philly-sec’s western boundary. Instead of the typical flat denuded ground that constituted the DMZ separating the two realms, the terrain here was mainly rolling hills. A few hundred meters ahead, beyond one of the hills, the crest of the six meter high wall rose ominously into the bleak skies.
“This is it,” Nick said, gliding the Destello to a stop behind a decrepit stone building shrouded in wild ivy.
She disembarked, lowered her night-vision visor and panned the area. It appeared to have once been grassland but was now overgrown with tangled shrubbery. Odd clumps, vaguely rectangular and evenly spaced, rose slightly higher than the surrounding foliage.
It took her a moment to realize that the clumps were tombstones, relics from an era before earthbound cremation and orbital vaporization became the obligatory methods. Back then, many people opted to have their decaying corpses buried in the ground. The cemetery, like numerous others, was slowly being reconquered by nature. Soon, even the scant visible evidence of the graves would be hidden.
Nick activated the optical camo. The Destello instantly blended into the stone and ivy backdrop.
“What is this building?” she whispered. She wasn’t only concerned about audio sensors a
t the wall picking up her voice. The solemnity of the cemetery, being here among the dead, seemed to demand hushed tones.
“It’s a mausoleum,” Nick said, using his normal speaking voice. “Back in its day, one of the fancier ones.”
He swept aside a nest of shrubbery at the entrance and located a door protected by an old digital lock. He punched in a twelve-digit code.
“Are you sure they can’t hear us?” she asked, gesturing in the direction of the wall.
“Not a chance. I hit their security system with a short-term virus. Drones, sat surveillance, sensor grids – they’ve all been disabled in this sector.”
As usual, she was amazed by the extent of Nick’s capabilities. Still, doubts surfaced. “Won’t that draw more attention to this sector, cause them to dispatch ground forces?”
“Trust me, we’ll be gone well before they go to that extreme.”
So far in their relationship, his cocky attitude and wide-ranging expertise hadn’t disappointed. Still, there was always a first time...
The door groaned as he pulled it back. He activated his headlamp and stepped inside. Bel followed. The air within was dank and faintly sulfurous. According to inscriptions on the walls, the mausoleum harbored the sealed remains of a dozen individuals from a family named Carlucci.
Nick got down on his knees, scoured dirt away from a spot on the floor to reveal a circular hatch with a metal handle. He pulled hard on the handle but the hatch wouldn’t budge.
“Give me a hand.”
Together they managed to free the hatch. A shaft with a rickety plastic ladder descended into the darkness.
“Smugglers’ tunnel,” he said. “They use it to bring illegals into Philly-sec and move tech and weapons in the other direction. It’s deep enough that the wall’s detectors can’t pick it up.”
“How’d you learn it was here?”
“A million-dollar bribe.”
Nick climbed down. Bel followed, pulling the hatch shut behind her.
Binary Storm Page 17
